General approach to performance testing

Build a test environment that is as close to your real production instance as possible (eg hardware, software, networking, etc)

Make sure to remove as many uncontrolled variables as you can from this environment (eg other services)

Use a tool to place a realistic, but simulated and repeatable load upon you server. (eg jmeter or selenium).

Decide on a way to measure performance of the server by capturing data (ram, load, time taken, etc)

Run your load and measure a baseline performance result.

Change one variable at a time, and re-run the load to see if performance gets better or worse. Repeat as necessary.

When you discover settings that result in a consistent performance improvement, apply to your production site.

How to use the caching settings

Since Moodle 2.4, Moodle has provided a caching plugin framework to give administrators the ability to control where Moodle stores cached data. For most Moodle sites the default configuration should be sufficient and it is not necessary to change the configuration. For larger Moodle sites with multiple servers, administrators may wish to use memcached, mongodb or other systems to store cache data. The cache plugin screen provides administrators with the ability to configure what cache data is stored where.

Types of cache

Moodle uses three types of cache to store cached data:

Request cache - The request cache is available for the duration of every page request. It is not shared between users and is used and cleared on every Moodle request.

Session cache - The session cache is available through a users session in Moodle. It is not shared between users, but persists for a single user throughout their session (i.e. from when they logon til when they log off)

Application cache - The application cache is a shared cache which is available for every request. It can be shared between users and the cached data can be kept indefinitely if required.

Cache types and multiple-server systems

If you have a system with multiple front-end web servers, the application cache must be shared between the servers. In other words, you cannot use fast local storage for the application cache, but must use shared storage or some other form of shared cache such as a shared memcache.

The same applies to session cache, unless you use a 'sticky sessions' mechanism to ensure that within a session, users always access the same front-end server.

Installed cache stores

This section of the administrator screen displays cache plugins which are installed on the system. It lists what the capabilities of each plugin, what type of cache they provide and provides allows a cache store to be added to the system.

Configured store instances

This section of the administrator screen displays cache stores which have been added to the system. It gives the ability to change the cache configuration and purge the cached data.

Cache lock instances

Moodle supports different mechanisms for 'locking' access to the various cache stores. At present there is only one option and it is not used, so it can safely be ignored.

Known cache definitions

Known cache definitions displays the caches which are in use by Moodle. Each item is an area of Moodle which is using caching. It gives the administrator the ability to configure an individual area of Moodle to use a different cache backend. For example, an administrator of a Moodle cluster may choose to make language string definitions be cached on a dedicated memcached server by using the memcached cache backend. See the section below for more information about configuring these.

Cache definition configuration

Each different cache can be configured independently, allowing admins to "tune" their setup for particular systems.

By default these caches are all set to use files, which is usually fine on a small one-server system.

On a cluster, however, these defaults can cause problems because shared filesystems are slow, so in these cases we recommend you use a faster shared caching backend like memcached instead. Note that most of these caches operating under the assumption that they are shared.

In some cases you can choose to use a non-shared cache like the local filesystem however in these instances you be careful to purge caches MANUALLY as part of system administration.

The following reference is intended to help you understand how each caching definition works so you can tune appropriately:

(Note to doc editors, we need contributions below:)

Language string cache

This is a cache of calculated strings which are originally pulled from language files.

In Moodle 2.5, this

expects shared cache

if not shared, must be manually purged after any language string change such as editing of local lang packs, updating of lang packs during upgrade, installation or uninstallation of languages

In Moodle 2.6 and later, this

works fine with local or shared node caches, you don't have to do anything special.

Database meta information

This is a cache of database structure information.

requires shared cache

if not shared, caches need to be invalidated after any DB structure change including creation of temporary tables

Event invalidation

Question definitions

HTML Purifier - cleaned content

This is a cache of texts (forum posts, resources, intros etc etc) from all parts of Moodle, after it has been cleaned of possible malicious data.

In Moodle 2.5,

this expects a shared cache

if not shared, must be manually purged after every upgrade or change of $CFG->allowobjectembed setting

In Moodle 2.6 and later,

this works fine with local or shared node caches, you don't have to do anything special.

Config settings

Course group information

Calendar subscriptions

What is cached:- Record entries from 'event_subscriptions' table, representing various calendar subscriptions.

When the cache is updated:- When a calendar subscription is updated or deleted.

How often it is hit:- Everytime a calendar subscription detail is fetched.

When should the cache be purged completely:- This should not be needed.

YUI Module definitions

Plugin types

expects shared cache

must be purged after every core upgrade or plugin installation, upgrade or uninstallation

Plugin list Application

Plugin info - base

Plugin info - activity modules

Plugin info - blocks

Plugin info - filters

Plugin info - repositories

Plugin info - portfolios

Course categories tree

Course categories lists for particular user

Course categories records

List of course contacts

Repositories instances data

Stores used when no mapping is present

This section displays the default cache stores which should be used by Moodle for each type of Moodle cache. If a mapping for a cache definition does not exist then this default store will be used instead.

Other performance testing

Two links that might be useful to anyone considering testing performance on their own servers:

In Moodle 2.6 onwards make sure you set $CFG->localcachedir to some local directory in config.php (for each node). This will speed up some of the disk caching that happens outside of MUC, such as themes, javascript, libraries etc.